


Friend

by bonehandledknife (ladywinter), Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)



Series: The Mountains Are The Same [16]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: (Yes Austeyr you are literally a gift), Because Past Immortan Joe, Buckle Up Kids We're Going To The Feels Place, Gen, Hallucinations, Max Brings Furiosa Gifts, Miscarriage, Past Rape/Non-con, Podfic Welcome, Warboys dealing with a post-Joe world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 04:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4732118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladywinter/pseuds/bonehandledknife, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/Primarybufferpanel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Friend: A 'friend' or spring-loaded camming device is a piece of rock climbing equipment. An anchoring device that stops you from plummeting to your death by using the force of your fall to generate massive amounts of friction. </i>
</p><p>Max was discovering that somehow, he had imagined that after he gave her his blood and she stood upright on the lift as it rose, she'd stay upright. Perhaps it was a combination of wishful thinking and appreciation for the sheer power of will that had kept her upright and fighting through their entire time together.</p><p>Perhaps he'd somehow considered her more than human. It’s not like he’d ever seen her sleep</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Max was discovering that somehow, he had imagined that after he gave her his blood and she stood upright on the lift as it rose, she'd stay upright. Perhaps it was a combination of wishful thinking and appreciation for the sheer power of will that had kept her upright and fighting through their entire time together.

Perhaps he'd somehow considered her more than human. It’s not like he’d ever seen her sleep.

Fact was that she was very badly injured, and finding her like he did, feverish and wheezing and small, unsettled him badly.

It was hard to listen to her feeble, rattling breaths, but it was even harder to be away where he couldn't hear them at all, where his mind could tell him it'd stopped.

“—ax, _Max_!”

He backed up and hit the wall. Red.

Blinked, and the red was hair not blood.

Blinked, and the red was— was that girl, Capable?

Capable.

Ah. He had left the room following Toast, her having a twitchy sort of angry he knew the feeling of, but as they walked further from the room calm settled over her while it left him. He’s not sure which way they turned, he knew it was upwards but not beyond that, the warren of tunnels in the Citadel confusing his direction-sense.

“Max, did you get all that.”

Max twitched, vision doubling with the living and the dead and, in the corner of his eye, Furiosa; and he can’t tell which she is supposed to belong to.

“Ah,” he scrounged his memory, “You’ve been handling things here, while Furiosa has been…” he gestured. “Got the food and water, got the Warpups on your side, got mmm, maybe some Warboys?”

He looked at them and they seemed to exchange a loaded glance but Capable stepped forward and nodded firmly, “Give us a few more days, I think I understand them.” Toast and Cheedo exchanged a glance behind her, wary, and they turned to look at Max over her shoulder.

He nodded back, head furrowing, “Trouble?”

One of the Vuvalini stepped forward, the one that’d been driving most of the way while they scrambled to keep Furiosa living. “Corpus and the Gatekeepers. Nothing that we can’t sort out. Some numbers-work but—”

And Max’s forehead furrowed deeper and Janey laughed.

“—we don’t need you for that. What we’re concerned about are those War parties,” Janey finished.

His hackles rose.

Toast looked at him and nodded. “I mentioned needing a scout, on our way out the room,” she said, eyeing him, measuring, “You found the Warboy not far away?”

Max hummed and looked apologetic, “Day’s walk.”

“Hmph, we need to know about the situation at the canyon. Didn’t think to grab a ride?”

 _From where?_ He tilted his head at her and felt his confusion grow.

The Vuvalini shook her head and stood up.

“We’ve got a sand buggy fixed up, a climber with deep treads, and a trailer for any likely-looking salvage. You’ll have a list of the things we’re most short on. Rest up today and ride tomorrow; see what you can find where the Rig blew, how many it took out, and maybe, if you’re lucky, how many Warboys and vehicles might be heading towards us. ”

These were clear tasks and Max found that he liked the focus it gave him. It carried him enough through the rest of the conversation and then all the way back to Furiosa's quarters, telling himself she would still be breathing until he could hear for himself, led there by the phantom sound of her breathing.

Her quarters which were full of War Boys.

Not as full, this mid-morning. The leader was apparently on bed rest same as Furiosa, and Austeyr was there chatting to them.

“Ehh?” Max looked around but there wasn’t much place to hide the other two.

Austeyr looked at him, “Oh, the Boss sent them off for the day’s observances, they should be back in the evening.”

Max shrugged and settled on the ledge by the window, noting with something of amusement that the younger man simply continued where he’d left off, telling Max's story for him, apparently turning the three sentence explanation Max had given Janey into a real epos.

"...and then he helped me get back here. Did or said something to the breeders on the lift and they let me up without needing a word from me."

Furiosa had apparently fallen asleep somewhere halfway into this tale, but the lancer wasn’t even looking at her. He was facing Ace and the old Warboy was looking at Max consideringly.

"And they brought me here just on his word."

" _Did_ they now?" Ace stared at Max and Max met his gaze, couldn’t do anything _but_ this, because it felt like a challenge.

The man nodded his head toward the door, and Max shrugged, getting up and waiting for Ace to lead him where he wanted to talk.

 

They left the room and walked deeper into the Citadel, the growing shadows making Max twitch in memory. This section of the Citadel, the Imperator's living quarters, was nicer than the section near the Organic Mechanic's space, but the air grates and crudely hacked corners and corridors still made him twitchy. He tried to keep track of where Furiosa's quarters were - he knew they hadn't gone far, but it was out of sight now and that made him restless.

"Why'd you bring him here?" Ace asked, stopping and leaning against the wall in an alcove.

Max shifted uneasily, getting ready to move,  trying to keep his back to a wall without cutting off his own escape route.

"He's hers," Max grunted, reminding himself that he'd seen her not minutes ago, that she'd been breathing. _Still breathing._ "Figured she'd want him back."

"Any others?"

"No. Not…" _not alive_.

"So what're you to her?" Ace rasped, questions shot like bullets.

Max looked at him, (remembers: still _breathing_ ) and wondered how the hell to answer something he had no answer to himself.

"You help her with the plan?"

Max blinked. Tried to work through what these men would know of what had happened; Furiosa being this injured, he didn't think she'd have had the chance to tell them. He didn't know what she would _want_ to tell them.

"No, uh—" he looked at the trails of water seeping from a pipe along the wall. _A waste_ , he thinks. "Was a— bloodbag." He spat the word. "m'escape kinda… collided. With hers."

"Hmm." Ace looked sceptical. Angry, maybe. "An' she just… _trusted_ you."

“Much as she does,” and Max set his feet, and looked at him in challenge, “ _anyone_.”

The War Boy pushed off the wall as if to shout but then—

"—Boss, _Boss_ ," they heard Austeyr down the hall, voice a little desperate, and the both of them startled. "I don't know where they went, but surely he would _tell_ you if he left."

Max twitched badly when Ace was suddenly beside him in the entrance of the alcove, moving silent for such a big guy, despite his injured ribs.

"—no wait, I will help you, Boss, I promised I would, didn't I?"

They glanced at each other, and Max shrugged.

"Well then at least lean on me... Okay, that's better, nice and upright."

Max and Ace moved into the hallway in unison, and Ace had an expression on his face Max suspected was mirrored on his own. Why the _hell_ was Furiosa - apparently - upright and walking? Why hadn't Austeyr stopped her?

When they caught up to her she was flushed and sweating a little from the effort and moving in the direction of the garages and lifts, not all that far from her room, so it only took a moment before they met up. Max immediately ducked under her arm to brace her other side, and Ace was left wheezing and holding his side, sweating now as well. Furiosa’s head was down, with an annoyed expression, then she shook her head and looked up at Ace, then over at Max.

“Hey,” he asked.

"Fool…" she rasped. "You left.."

He didn't know if she meant just now, or when they'd all been on the lift with the Gigahorse, or at the edge of the salt flats. He supposed it didn't matter. He nodded in agreement.

“You usually wait…" it took her a moment to catch her breath enough to to continue, "at least until…” _until she could see_.

Max cleared his throat, “I had, um, some questions.” He gestured at Ace. Ace looked back at him with incomprehension. Perhaps, maybe, the War Boy actually asked most of the actual questions, but it’d answered questions that Max had been mulling over.

She blinked and looked from face to face, as if trying to process seeing them in the same place.

"Wanted to... say... thanks," she said then.

"...for what?" Max’s presence seemed to only disturb them, her present crew looking at him with hesitance or outright suspicion and here she was, struggling out of bed to look for him. Not a few moments before he and Ace had been about to start shouting at each other, and she might have stumbled into the middle of that. He regretted again that he hadn't just dropped Austeyr off at the gates. He should probably leave sooner than planned, scout out that canyon.

"Bringing me Aus…"

Austeyr ducked his head, suddenly awkward. Max grunted for him to open the door of Furiosa's quarters, and steered her through the doorway.

“He’s y’crew,” Max said, as they lowered her, and stared at Ace until he came in and settled on the bed too. “How you talked about them…” he hummed uncomfortably, “thought to, mm, bring him to you.”

Ace settled in next to Furiosa, a little distance between them, leaving Max crouching awkwardly by the mattress

"So she trusted you. Just like that," Ace said softly, seeing the Boss sink into exhausted slumber.

“Not right away," Max conceded. "She may have,” he shrugged, “hit me in the face, some, first.”

"With her metal hand?" Ace sounded interested despite himself.

"With, hmm, her,” he gestured awkwardly at his left elbow, “and boltcutters."

Ace looked at him differently, like he was inspecting for damage.

"Got off lightly from the look of ya."

"Was still wearin' a muzzle at the time"

"She _trusted_ you." Ace's voice kept catching on that.

Max took his time to answer. He knew she'd betrayed her crew for her escape, guys she'd worked with for years. That she had accepted him as quickly as she had must compound the betrayal.

"Took some.." he looked away, then back to Furiosa. "Some mutual, ah, life-saving."

“Lifesaving you say?” Ace looked at him with even more of a crooked tilt to his mouth, eye ridges climbing in disbelief. Max tried looking at her the way the Warboys did, saw the injuries, the ragged strain of her breath, the flush of fever, and knew that for them seeing it was not the relief of _still alive_ but instead _how could you let this happen to her_.

"Boooys…" Furiosa croaked, sounding exhausted and fed up. It took her a long moment to stop coughing and catch her breath, and for a moment Max saw the same worry in the Warboy's eyes that he knew was in his own.

Max settled down on his ledge, watching her with concern.She needed to be okay. He needed her to.  He thought they all needed her to.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a miscarriage flashback. Not particularly graphic.

_Her belly hurts_

_The Green Place is burning and whatever life was inside of her has gone still, and she's bleeding, sweating, crying, because worse than the pain in her belly is knowing he’s coming for her tonight. He will want to know how his son is but her belly is emptying and she sits in a pool of growing red. And during this one single moment in these many horrible days her calm_ splinters _, because they will blame her for her body’s rejection of his seed and the promised future twentyfold punishment makes the breaths go high and quick in her throat. Because she is so tired. So tired and not knowing from where she’d find more reserves, running on empty._

_But I will survive this, she promises the unsteady shape of her mothers._

_it will be hard, my Furiosa, her mother replies, clasping Furiosa's phantom hand with her own. Both sets of dead fingers she can't feel. We are here, my Fury, says Katee Concannon on her other side._

 

 

* * *

 

 

Austeyr watched Ace lead Max out of the door and could only hope they wouldn't kill each other. He'd tried telling the story of how they’d met so that Ace might be a little easier on the guy. He hoped it worked and reached out to feel the Boss' forehead.  

She flinched away from his touch, curling in on herself a little, her arm protectively over her stomach.

"s okay Boss, it's just me," he murmured. Her eyes snapped open.

"He can't know," she told him with sudden, feverish intensity, not seeming to really see him. "You can't tell him I lost it, he'll be so angry, he'll kill me…"  

Austeyr startled, remembering a time he'd kept her company when she was with Organic. She'd gotten some ugly scratches on her stomach from a Buzzard rake weapon, and there'd been this moment when she'd woken to see the Organic bent over her. She'd pleaded with him much as she had just now, and Austeyr hadn't really understood, had thought it was about the Immortan knowing she was injured.  

"You gotta help me hide the blood,” she said, and he looked around wildly, examined her and the bedding, because was she bleeding? Was she injured in ways he hadn't known? Had her moon-dark started? But there was no blood that he could see, and in the sheen of fever in her eyes there was the glaze of fear. “Help me, he can't know.”

“The Immortan?”

“Don’t tell him I lost the baby,” she hissed. It was a weak sound, closer to pleading than it was to an order. "Don't tell him, _please_."

“I won’t,” Aus promised, mouth trying out the shape of the words, testing his understanding, because how could he not? “I’ll help you, I'll keep it from Joe.”

She sagged as if he’d gotten it right. But.

But she _missed_ him. Did she not? The Boss missed being in the Immortan's favour, having his attention lavished on her. That was what Ace said. Austeyr had never had cause to question it.

Instead this would mean she’d been, still was, afraid of the Immortan. It felt as blasphemous as anything he’d ever heard of, that their Imperator feared so deeply.

However Austeyr knew how much courage was just the flipside of fear; the inherent secret all War Boys kept from each other and from themselves. They were all of them afraid. Of dying and not being worthy, of leaving this world mediocre and soft and unremembered.

So maybe, maybe the Boss was just afraid of not bearing Joe’s sons proper? Of her body being mediocre? He’d seen the silvery marks on her lower belly underneath the scars from that Buzzard’s rake. She must have come close to bearing the Immortan a child once.

Even as he thought this, Austeyr shook his head. It didn’t match her face and her tone and the way she stressed her words. It didn’t match the look about her eyes and the set of her mouth, and it tugged at his memories, because. Truthfully?

It didn't match the way her face went cold and still whenever somebody mentioned the Immortan. It never had.

It was outward directed instead of inward, had always seemed more like anger than regret or shame, and that had always confused Austeyr, but he had figured that perhaps he’d just not known his Boss as long as the others. Maybe he was reading her wrong and making too much of a big deal, seeing things that weren’t there. He didn’t want to mess up how the Ace wanted them to handle it, which seemed to be to her satisfaction. Moreover didn’t want to hassle his superiors with something they’d probably already seen and known about. And as time went by, Austeyr integrated the stories and culture around him and simply assumed that that was how Furiosa always reacted, that his first impression must be wrong.

Now he’s hearing that Furiosa’s killed Joe, but she’s not reacting like a War Boy that won a tussle that got him better gear and a spot on a crew. She did not strut or crow or look triumphant; the few lucid moments he’d seen in the short time since he’d arrived, she looked maybe grimly satisfied and not at all curious about her new status or the things that she’d won. She was staying in her old room instead of the Immortan’s rooms, and it was more bare than she’d left it. And just now, she’d dreamt that he’d been alive again, as if it was a nightmare, the kind you got with the Night Fevers, the kind that had you wake up screaming and sweating. As if Joe wasn't a bitterweet memory but the most terrifying thing that might occur to her.

"I won't tell," he repeated, because it seemed to calm her. “Can trust me with it.”

"Where's the Fool?" she said, as if the previous exchange was already forgotten.

"Um—" he struggled to switch gears, mind still churning with new understanding. "He left with Ace."

She suddenly started struggling to sit up, a determined light in her eyes. Austeyr wanted to press her back down to the bed, to stop her from going anywhere, but she wobbled, and he ended up supporting her to her feet.

"Boss, they've just gone to talk, I'm sure they'll be right back—"

“He leaves,” she hauled in a breath and rose up, “if he thinks he’s... not needed.”

Austeyr didn’t know whether to slow her down or to push her back, or even _how_ to do either: he didn’t want to aggravate her injuries further when she was already red and sweating with it.

“Boss, wait a moment, take it slow.”

“Last time,” she replied with jaw set and fever-glossed forehead, heading towards the door, “he slipped away.” Furiosa pressed a hand against it, “Was quick…. didn't notice in time..”

She opened the door and used the momentum to start lurching down the hallway. Austeyr did the only thing he could, which was to go after her and offer his good arm for her to learn on.

 

Later, as Ace and Max got her back into her quarters, Austeyr stayed behind in the hallway, leaning against the wall, trying to settle his mind back into some sort of order. It had been a relief he'd scarcely been able to believe that she'd welcomed him back, despite not getting even a lance off, despite being mediocre in the fight against the Buzzards, despite the lumps on his side hampering his throwing arm. For some unknown, V8 blessed reason, she considered him not only still part of her crew but apparently always had. And now she had— he blew out a breath— She had _thanked Max for getting Austeyr back to her._

 _Thanked_ him.

For bringing her _Austeyr._

He could count on one hand the times he'd heard her express gratitude to anybody, and have fingers left over. Appreciation, that wasn't so rare. Praise, if you'd served well. But thanks?

Thanks as if she'd been given something of high value? He can’t wrap his mind around it.

It had to be the fever.

But the fever didn't make her afraid of Joe, he knew that. It had just made her confused enough to show it, something he knew she would otherwise never have done. It had made her disoriented enough to re-live losing the Immortan's child, and her terror of the punishment that would follow. Her terror of Joe.

He felt like he had known this, no, _should_ have known this. Austeyr felt like his world got subtly realigned, as he blinked and felt the clearer for it.

Did Ace know? He clearly hadn't, before. Or maybe…. maybe the 'she misses the Immortan' explanation was just the line they'd decided on…? But no, Austeyr thought he would have seen that. Ace wasn't good at untruths.

Given the way the Ace suddenly kept his distance, no longer slept next to the Boss, retracted his hand when he reflexively reached for her… Given the way he watched her like she was a lancehead gone unstable.. Austeyr was pretty sure Ace knew _now_ , and that the knowledge was very new.

* * *

 

Ace tried to work through the pounding ache of his ribs. He shouldn't have gotten up, Miss Gale had been clear about it, but the duties of an Ace couldn't wait. He resented that he'd had to let the Wastelander support the Boss, but he'd barely been standing himself by that point.

He still didn't know what to make of the man. If it was true what Max said, that their escapes had collided… The only reason he could think of why she'd taken the Wastelander with her was because she'd truly had no other choice, and that thought hurt so much he shied away from it, because he'd been _right there_ , he and the crew shaken off her back like sand flies, punched off her running board like Wretched from the lift.

He looked at her, at her flushed, feverish face, and turned away at the swell of pain that clenched his throat.

Kompass and Rachet must be having the easier day of it, with the Tenday ceremonies.


End file.
